Ethan still loves solving all of his different Rubik’s Cubes. That’s where this week of unschooling started and included his usual math and busyness.

January 13

Just like the day before, this was another Rubik’s Cube day, with a few other things thrown in.

Ethan made a video showing how to solve the mini skewb, also known as the skewbextreme.

The weather has been bright and sunny so we went for a walk along the seawall. Ethan wanted to play at the playground for a few minutes.

As we walked along the beach, Ethan was busy drawing happy faces into the sand. He also drew them near the water and watched as the tide washed the faces away.

Ethan found these small pinecones and was intrigued by how shaking the pinecones could make the seeds fell out of them.

We headed towards the mall to do some grocery shopping.

It was a really nice day for a walk together.

Back at home, Ethan continued his cube day by watching different videos about alternative ways to solve the 3×3 cube.

He also learned how to put the Rubik’s Twist back into it’s original state. The Rubik’s Twist can be opened up into a long snake shape and Ethan hasn’t been able to put it back into it’s original ball shape until now.

Ethan and Dong Eun got these cookies and noticed how under the net weight it says “of love.” So Ethan wanted to know how much love was in each cookie. He thought there were 10 cookies so he was able to quickly divide 312 by 10. But when he opened the box, he realized there were 12 cookies!

He was going to use a calculator to figure out the new answer because dividing by 12 is more difficult. He then remembered learning about dividing two-digit numbers in Secrets of Mental Math.

He was able to calculate how much love was in each cookie without a calculator. The answer was 26g of love in each cookie.

Ethan made a video about his 10 easiest cubes and a couple other videos, too.

He used my iPhone to film, as he does quite often. This is his set up.

And here he is editing in iMovie.

We noticed a spider on the arm of the sofa so we caught it and had a look at it before Ethan released it outside.

Ethan did his 60-second exercise challenge before finishing the night. This was his second round of the workout.

January 14

Today was a music and math day, as Ethan was inspired to teach himself how to play an 80s pop song on his violin and he created a math formula for Rubik’s Cubes.

We were listening to a song that we all love, Take On Me by A-Ha, and Ethan wanted to learn how to play it on the violin. He previously taught himself how to play Despacito so this was a new challenge.

He found the violin sheet music for Take On Me and started preparing it so he can read the notes. He then practiced and got better and better.

Ethan wanted to find out how the factorial function, the one above the 4 key, worked on his calculator. He knows what factorials are from learning about them before.

He watched a lesson about factorials on Khan Academy.

Ethan watched this video about calculating the permutations of a Rubik’s Cube and wanted to write a formula for performing the calculation on any cube.

Ethan did a lesson on giant tortoises to learn about the differences between turtles and tortoises.

He learned about properties in math using his math textbook.

And he did the quiz to check his knowledge.

Here is the formula he came up with to calculate the possible combinations/permutations of any cube.

Once he had the formula ready, he made a video about it.

Time to play outside.

Once back in, he drew Rubik’s Cubes.

He also drew a 6×6 cube using whiteboard markers.

We watched his video on how to calculate the combinations of any cube where he introduced his formula.

He was watching a lesson about irregular verbs on Khan Academy and wanted to find out which verbs were irregular, so we printed out a list. Ethan and Dong Eun had fun testing each other and Ethan might make a game to practice irregular verbs.

Watching his video.

Ethan practiced Take On Me on the violin again while listening to other people perform the song on a violin on YouTube.

Ethan did some editing of a video he made earlier about Rubik’s Cubes.

60-second exercise challenge time. This was his second workout of the day. The last exercise is trying to hold a backbend for as long as he can. On this one, he went just over 1 minute and 10 seconds.

The graph he uses to plot the average reps and times from his workouts is filling in nicely.

And his chart showing his reps and times is also filling up.

January 15

Ethan had a dentist appointment today, as well as an eye exam, so we made it a family outing. This turned out well because Ethan needed to choose a new pair of frames and needed Dong Eun’s help.

Early morning. Everyone did a great job getting up and getting ready to be on time for Ethan’s dentist appointment. He had a metal spacer, which is like a ring, on one tooth to maintain a space for one of his teeth to grow. Long story, but he had a tooth removed before it was supposed to come out on its own, so that’s why he had the spacer.

We played some Pac-Man while waiting in the reception area of the dentist.

Ethan was pretty good. And when he went in to see the dentist, he went on his own. This was the first time I didn’t go in with him, so that was pretty cool.

Spacer out because his tooth is starting to come up. He loves how it feels without the spacer in his mouth.

After his eye exam, we did some grocery shopping and had sushi for lunch.

We found a great glasses store that most of the other stores in town send their jobs to. We spent a lot of time looking at frames. It was tiring for Ethan but he eventually settled on a smart looking pair of glasses (not the ones in the photo). He had to be very patient because we tried so many frames.

Later that night, Ethan had violin and taekwondo class. He was very excited about violin class because he started the second Suzuki Violin School book, as well as getting a book on reading music from his violin teacher.

While shopping earlier at Costco, we got Ethan this book on coding with Scratch. Costco had a few of these DK books and always has the cheapest price.

These two books we got from the library today to see if they’d be worth buying. The English one is of particular interest because the language arts book Ethan has is for middle school and it’s a bit beyond his ability at the moment.

Ethan did two workouts today and also got me to work out with him.

His progress, so far. He calculates and marks his performance on the graph at the end of the day’s workout.

Ethan finished the night by reading his new coding book. It was quite the busy day today.

January 16

Nature school day, but we also ended up going out because Ethan’s glasses were ready to be picked up.

Off to Soaring Eagle Nature School for the day.

After nature school, we went to pick up Ethan’s new glasses. He was pretty excited.

He was also very patient when getting his glasses fitted. At first, he didn’t say that the adjustments were uncomfortable, but after letting him that the technician is there to help him, he opened up and communicated clearly how the glasses felt.

His shoes had gotten pretty trashed so we went shopping for a new pair. Ethan wanted a pair of shoes with real laces, his first pair ever with laces! He had to practice tying them up a few times but eventually figured it out.

We went for a pizza dinner at Whole Foods afterwards.

After dinner, we stayed at Whole Foods for a bit and Ethan practiced solving his 3×3 Rubik’s Cube with a cube timer app.

Back home, Ethan did his 60-second workout routine… twice! After a day of nature school and shopping, he was still motivated to do his two workouts. Nice work, Ethan!

Not only did he do his workouts, but with some vegan chocolate cake in him, he also did his musical notation homework. Actually, he was looking forward to doing this because he liked the challenge of decoding the notes.

We want to try some exercises to improve Ethan’s and my eyesight. We found a video with 10 exercises so we did them and will try to do them every night.

We also bought Ethan an easel with a whiteboard on one side and a chalkboard on the other. Ethan is already planning on using the easel in his next videos.

January 17

Ethan started the day with some trigonometry and learned about finding missing sides of a triangle. This video was from Khan Academy.

He also read about finding missing sides in his math book.

For violin practice, he listened to the new song he’s learning, Judas Maccabaeus.

Practiced the songs he’s learned.

Back to math. He took the trigonometric ratios quiz.

He then taught Dong Eun about finding missing sides by using his new easel’s chalkboard.

He then did some history and answered some comprehension questions about ancient Greece.

He loves using the easel!

He then started learning about ancient Rome from his history textbook.

He also watched a Crash Course video about the Roman Empire.

For language arts today, he started by learning about how and why we use italics, underlines and quotes.

He also learned about adjectives again. Here, he learned on Khan Academy.

He also read about adjectives in the grammar book we borrowed from the library called Help Your Kids With English. This is part of the same series of books like his Help Your Kids With Math book that he uses every day.

Ethan was going to write a fictional story using as many adjectives as possible, so he printed out a sheet of “Fabulous Adjectives” to help him.

Here’s his story, which continues the story about the Ball character.

He did tend to repeat the same adjectives, but it was still good practice. He’s supposed to try the adjectives again tomorrow.

We also borrowed Help Your Kids With Science and Ethan was reading a few things from that book, like what is inside atoms.

He read about gravity.

And he watched a Khan Academy video about gravity.

In the same Help Your Kids With Science book, Ethan learned about the history of life on earth. He then taught Dong Eun what he learned.

More violin practice.

Ethan made these funny monster drawings.

Ethan wants to make another video about Rubik’s Cubes, so he did some research tonight. He’ll make the video tomorrow.

Ethan finished his day by doing a second 60-second workout. Here, he was doing burpees.

January 18

Ethan really likes the new easel. He used it to practice some drawing this morning. He also watched some videos about drawing and he also knows about sketchnoting, so perhaps he’ll find even more uses for his easel.

Ethan learned about quadrilaterals today.

He watched a Khan Academy video about quadrilaterals.

And he drew this diagram to explain quadrilaterals. It seems like his writing has become much neater since using the chalkboard. It might be because he’s forced to be more deliberate with his writing when using chalk.

He used the Help Your Kids With Science book to learn about circuits. Since he has a couple of Snap Circuits sets, this was probably a good way to dive deeper into how circuits work.

And of course, he drew a diagram of how a circuit works on the chalkboard.

He practiced some violin.

He did some grammar practice using an article from Canadian Reader. He did some work on common nouns versus proper nouns.

He did some more practice with adjectives using a new list of words.

He wrote a new story using adjectives.

He continued reading about Ancient Rome.

He drew a story about the Romans on his chalkboard to talk about what he learned.

He also wrote about Rome in his notebook.

Time to play with his friends outside.

Ethan made a video about the number of combinations for his Rubik’s Cubes. It was over 20 minutes long so he spent some time editing and trying to reduce the overall length.

Since it was Friday night, Ethan wanted to play some games together. We played a bit of Battleship, then we played some Scrabble.

January 19

Ethan started the day with symphony practice and skating lessons. The skating lessons went much better this week because Ethan didn’t have to worry about his helmet or glasses.

After some lunch, we went out to the playground. I wanted to practice riding the skateboard and Ethan wanted to make paper airplanes.

The playground’s big slide is a great place to launch paper airplanes.

There were two younger kids there who wanted to try the paper airplanes so Ethan let them.

He tried several designs and kept tweaking the airplanes to make them perform better.

This last design worked the best. Ethan said it was like a ship from Star Wars.

Back home, Ethan worked on a couple of birthday cards for his friends Nico and Paulo.

After finishing the cards, he was reading Help Your Kids With Science and was curious what https stood for. So we looked it up online.

Ethan used his chalkboard to draw the red and gold hearts for Dong Eun. In turn, she drew the one on the left for Ethan. The Korean characters are Ethan’s name in Korean.

Ethan then did some learning about graphing linear equations and gave us a short lesson about it.

One of Ethan’s videos on his YouTube channel has over 4,900 views. I mentioned to him that part of the reason is that the title is clear and searchable by Google. We encouraged him to start rewriting his video titles, adding a short description of the video and including the correct tags. I also suggested that he should make custom thumbnail images for his videos to attract people to the video. Here’s the first thumbnail he made.

After dinner, it was time for some board games.

The chalkboard is such fun for Ethan. He wrote this message before bedtime.

And then he erased it and made this one. It refers to how Ethan and Dong Eun say “I love you” to each other. They always say their love is bigger than the sky and bigger than the universe.

I wanted to teach Ethan about how and why he should use the camera’s flash to bounce light off the ceiling when it’s dark. The photo above was taken by Ethan with the flash pointed up at the ceiling. This photo was taken with the flash pointed straight ahead.